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Wow, I love this. That dog is adorable. What is an artist trading card? You nailed it.

trekmom said:

Wow, I love this. That dog is adorable. What is an artist trading card? You nailed it.

Click to expand...

I'm glad you asked! In 1997, Swiss artist M. Vanci Stirnemann created the first ATCs as a way to share art with others. He produced 1,200 cards (they're sized at 2.5" x 3.5"), each featuring an original piece of art, and traded them with fellow artists. The idea quickly gained popularity, and by the early 2000s, ATCs had become a global phenomenon.

The idea is to trade them with other people, give them away...no one is to sell them. All sorts of artwork is used (this was not originally a digial phenomenon)...paint, drawing with all mediums, photography, even wood, metal, fabric. Lots of collage work. When I first got involved at Scrapbookgraphics.com back in the day, Maya set up a separate web site/forum called Digital Art Quirks and over there we ran a monthly ATC challenge for a while. We'd share a theme and then people would create enough cards for all the signed up participants. We literally mailed them to each other! Sometimes people would do hybrid cards, adding ephemera, ribbon, thread, brads. They fit perfectly in baseball card sleeves, so they can also be put in the album pocket pages created for baseball cards.

When we printed them out, we also had some backs that we printed and we'd cut them out and glue them together. The backs would have a place for what the series is called, the artist's name, the number this card is in the series, the date.

I was just looking through some of the ones I've received the other day...they're just so cute!

I love this so much!! What a wonderful idea and fabulous ATC!!